Chris Christie: The GOP’s Next Crummy Presidential Nominee?

Sensible conservatives have had to put up with a lot since Ronald Reagan left the White House — and to be clear, Reagan also had a few very weak moments. But expecting us to get enthusiastic about the sadly realistic prospect of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie becoming the Republican Party’s next presidential nominee is, at least for me, way beyond the pale.

If Governor Christie isn’t the most cynical, self-centered, egotistical opportunist exploiting a carefully developed but fundamentally false conservative persona on the political scene today, I don’t want to meet the person who is.

The event representing the straw that broke the camel’s back, causing me to reject the idea of Christie ever rising any further than Garden State governor, took place on Tuesday, when he lashed out at the federal flood insurance program’s utter failure to come through in time of dire need for the victims of Superstorm Sandy. Here is some of what he said:

… I’ve been as patient as I’m going to be with the national flood insurance plan. And now I’m going to have to turn my special brand of love and affection onto the national flood insurance plan, and this morning is the start of that. They need to get more people into New Jersey, they need to get to work, and they need to get to processing these claims.

… New Jersey households timely paid their insurance premiums. So they deserve to have their claims timely paid now.

… 85% of (Sandy-related private insurance) homeowner claims have been resolved; only 30% of flood insurance claims have been resolved. That’s just unacceptable — unacceptable for people who paid these premiums. And I’m not going to sit around and take it quietly any longer.

We’ve tried to work behind the scenes, urged them to do it. We’ve gotten all kinds of assurances that haven’t been met. And so now we’re going to be publicly calling on them and calling on our Congressional delegation to get all over the national flood insurance program.

Why did this bother me so greatly? I’ll explain.

Just three months earlier, on October 31, President Barack Obama visited the areas wrecked by Sandy, and promised:

… [w]e are not going to tolerate red tape. We’re not going to tolerate bureaucracy.

At the time, just days before the November 6 presidential election, instead of delivering the measured gratitude appropriate in such early-stage circumstances, Christie made the rounds of the morning TV shows praising Obama as if he were the second coming of Mother Teresa and Clara Barton combined, even though all the president had done was pay him a photo-op visit and utter some encouraging words: “[t]he president has been all over this and deserves great credit. He gave me his number at the White House and told me to call him if I needed anything.” We have Match.com for that, Chris.

Despite the virtual blackout by Obama’s apparatchiks in the national establishment press, many of whose members live and work within an hour’s drive of hard-hit locales, it is a fact that Obama’s personally delivered Sandy-related promises aren’t being kept. For many in the affected areas, the process of recovery from Sandy is going no better — and possibly worse, given the winter weather — than the cleanup effort after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The press somehow portrayed that disaster and its aftermath, both in fact largely fed by the utter incompetence of now-indicted former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and former Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, both Democrats, as President George W. Bush’s fault.

Perhaps it’s a stretch to say that Christie’s slurpfest with Obama just a week before Election Day cost Mitt Romney the presidency, but it indisputably exposed Chris Christie as being all about Chris Christie.

It’s now clear in retrospect that the governor didn’t care about what he was doing to Romney’s campaign, and exploited Sandy to drive up his in-state approval ratings. Why? Christie is up for reelection this fall, and needed high poll numbers to persuade credible challengers like Newark Mayor Cory Booker to stand down.

Now that he’s in command, Christie clearly thinks it’s more important to avoid alienating Democrats who worship at the altar of Dear Leader than it is to note that Obama’s promises were nothing but empty, substance-free platitudes, and to personally demand that Obama himself make the situation change. On Tuesday, he should have used his “special brand of love and affection” on Obama for the government’s Sandy failure, not because of politics, but because it is a fact, and because Obama guaranteed it wouldn’t happen. Instead, he dumped the task of getting the federal government to do its job on his state’s congressional delegation. What a joke.

Christie is obviously trying to achieve an electoral rout in the governor’s race nine months from now to create momentum for a 2016 presidential run. I’ve got a better idea, Chris: Work on your state’s economy. It stinks.

Christie deserves credit for balancing New Jersey’s budget without a tax increase, reining in the public-sector unions a bit, and keeping his state from going the way of California and Illinois. Though those are not minor accomplishments, that about completes his list of positives. At the time he achieved his supposedly seminal triumph, I was a bit surprised that the state’s unions didn’t go into protest overdrive as they did in Wisconsin. Now I think I understand why. The governor appears to have lost whatever interest he might have had in fundamental, long-term government reform. Democrats can simply wait out his departure and get back to their old tricks if (more likely when) they reclaim the governor’s mansion in 2017.

New Jersey’s unemployment rate was a seasonally adjusted 9.6 percent in December, exceeding the national average by almost two points. (The rate was 9.8 percent just before Sandy, so spare me the weather-related excuses.) Though his term as governor began six months after the recession’s official end, the state’s economy has only added a seasonally adjusted 60,000 jobs in three years. The Tax Foundation rates New Jersey’s business climate as second worst in the nation. After eight years (we hope) of Barack Obama, the last thing America will need in 2016 is a guy who is only adept at extending malaise.

Despite Barack Obama gaining 8 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008, Mitt Romney failed to win the presidency because he got 1.4 million fewer votes than John McCain did four years earlier. I fully expect that Chris Christie, if nominated, will underperform Romney, condemning us to yet another four years of ever-increasing statism and making the nation’s return from the brink of ruin virtually if not totally impossible.

Surely we can do better than Chris Christie, the Garden State Grandstander.

(Thumbnail on PJM homepage based on a modified L.E.Mormile / Shutterstock.com image.)

Along with having a decades-long career in accounting, finance, training and development, Tom Blumer has written for several national online publications primarily on business, economics, politics and media bias. He has had his own blog, BizzyBlog.com, since 2005, and has been a PJM contributor since 2008.

Well, if the plan is to get a lot of conservatives to vote 3rd party (Libertarian or whatever else is available in 2016) or to just stay home, a Christie nomination would do it. I will go vote, no matter what, but the inside-the-Beltway wing of the GOP better get it thru their heads that I and a lot of voters like me are to the point of being willing to vote for a 3rd party and help put the GOP out of its misery. The system is pretty much rigged in the USA to have just two major political parties, but nothing says the GOP has to be one of the two.

I would think that Christie will have a hard time running though. I mean, how can he see where he’s going with his head where it is re: Obama’s anatomy?

After witnessing the massive and systemic electoral fraud perpetrated this last November by the Marxocrats, with no complaint or challenge from the GOP, it is obvious that there will never be another legitimate national election ever again. It doesn’t matter who the Republican Party (or any other party) runs; only the Marxocrats will “win”.

In the main (at least from the one-page view on my screen that would seem to be complete) it’s about stopping voter intimidation activities, especially but not limited to those conducted outside the voting place, and particularly those that are ethnically or racially targeted, and whose purpose is ”to deter qualified voters from voting.”

Maybe it’s the cheap drug store glasses, but what am I missing?

And just to clarify, in my world ignoring voter fraud would be a hanging offense, but on its face this decree would seem to provide no defense at all.

“…exploiting a carefully developed but fundamentally false conservative persona on the political scene today…”

Don’t you get it yet? The only way you win in politics today is by lying to the American public. Remember those “glory” days when Obama was running for president in 2008 and he sold himself to the American public as being a “centrist?” Remember those halcyon days when Barack Obama thought that large Federal deficits were “un-patriotic” and “wrong” and that he wantd to balance the budget in a few years? Remember all that nonsense? Remember, “If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance” and “Obamacare will bend the cost curve down on premiums?” Remember all that? Good times, good times.

It is all lies. Christie has only learned his lessons literally at the feet of the master when it comes to lying. Christie literally embraced the man who made it an art form of lying to people to get what he wants. So please, don’t be surprised if Christie mouths conservative platitudes and governs like a RINO. The spirit of Ronald Reagan is dead in the Republican Party, at least when it comes to running for president. There are a lot more real conservatives in the Senate (like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz, maybe even Rubio), but I don’t see any of them getting elected to the White House any time soon. Not unless we have another major financial crisis, which is a very distinct possibility given the economy today.

a very distinct possibility? I:d say it’s an absolute certainty, given that Obama is spending the nation into bankruptcy at warp speed, and the Rs are doing little, if anything, to stop him. Why isn’t the House defunding ObamaCareless, they control the purse?!? The question is, once the dust settles after the inevidable collapse, will there be anything left of the country to salvage from the smoking ruins?

I’m an equal opportunity A2S1 (a much more accurate term than “birther”, since it specifically references the source of all eligibility objections).

Cruz is yet another GOP rising star who is constitutionally ineligible to the Presidency. He was born in Canada to a Cuban foreign national and an American mother. Rubio likewise is ineligible – although born in Florida, his parents were still Cuban citizens until years after his birth.

As US Senators, they are both sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution, including A2S1, even, or perhaps especially, if it prevents the fulfillment of their personal aspirations and ambitions.

“The only way you win in politics today is by lying to the American public”

Well LibertyShip, there you go again . . nailing it in a short sentence. This is a de-Tocqueville-ish observation for our times. It applies universally to both parties, across all levels of government, to non-elected public posts and even to unions. In politics, the truth gets you no where but gone. Some powerful interest’s ox is always gored by the truth and they will always obfuscate and attack until the person trying to enlighten the low-information voter is toast. And to paraphrase Jack Nicholson, most voters can’t handle the truth.

Yup. Bloomberg as horrible as he is and he is indeed horrible was the best choice New York City had for mayor. Once a big enough swath of the country is in the muck the less a presidential race means anyway.

Cripsy Cream Christie is a big progressive like all the other Republicans we charmingly call “RINOS”. And with Karl Rove (why don’t we just call him Karl Marx for short) vacuuming up money to club conservatives in the primaries, do we still have a chance for fundamental change? Both parties want to keep the money flowing. It has to be true, but under the leadership of Boehner, it has. They can’t be that inept…only that complicit.

Because the Socialists won’t wait (remember, they were already planning Obama’s run in ’04, when he gave the keynote at the DNC.), and the RINOs won’t wait, either (Romney was “inevidable” even before McCAIN lost!). Now that Rove has founded his nifty new RINOPAC we can’t afford to wait, either. If there is any hope of getting the nomination for a conservative, we’d better find one to circle the wagons around PDQ!

Yes, and we’d better grow up enough to circle the wagons around a less-than-perfect candidate, or we’ll be divided and conquered AGAIN!

Does anybody seriously think we’d have done worse with Perry or Newt? I don’t think either one is a great conservative, not at all. But Perry or Newt might have actually run a race, and maybe even won.

And once in office, does anybody think Obama would have been better for us than Perry or Newt?

If we had united around one or the other, even based on a COIN TOSS, we’d have been better off!

I used to be in the ad business. We have a good product but very bad sales people to sell it. One of the things about Romney that amazed me is that as a former CEO he forgot that basic fact of business. Christie will not change it for the GOP/

I went against my better judgement last year and held my nose (yet again) to vote Romney in hopes he would defeat Dear Leader. But there is no way in hell I would do the same for Chris Christie. If he wins the nomination, the GOP is dead to me. I’ll vote Libertarian. At least I’ll be able to look at myself in the mirror the next morning.

To sum up, Christie would be the hippo to break the camel’s back. No way, no how will I ever vote for him. Ever.

Christi may appeal to some people of the RINO persuasion but his record sucks for the following reasons:

1. He is an opportunist as demonstrated in his behaviour after Sandy and love fest with Obama.
2. He is bascially a liberal with some fiscal sense period.
3. He is in favor of gun control.
4. He is a big global warming climate change idiot
5. He is soft on Islam. (we need to deal with the stealth jihad that is gaining momentum but which the PC types cannot mention)

Right on all counts, tommy. And a damn shame it is, isn’t it? When he won and immediately confronted the teachers back in those heady days, I really thought Christie had good instincts and a mind in the right place. It hurts to be so wrong…

This article is absolutely accurate. Christie is a bull elephant in a China shop and already blew the optics on running anyway with his David Letterman stunt. If he gets nominated I will do what I have never ever done in my life…STAY HOME.

Mark D. is right — “Tony Soprano” Chris Christie does not have a snowball’s chance of getting the GOP nomination for president. You can bet the farm on that.

As has been noted, he is pro-union, pro-Islamist, and a typical northeast moderate squish. Moreover, his Soprano act won’t go over well in most of the country. Only in a sad place like New Jersey could such an act sell. Thankfully, NJ, the rest of the northeast, and the Left Coast are now the armpit of America. People are fleeing most of those depressed states faster than rats on a sinking ship.

It is interesting to see the RINO defections in the Pub party continue — Charlie Crist, Christie, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling in VA, Karl Rove, etc. The problem with the GOP is not that it is too conservative, but that it isn’t conservative enough, and that at the presidential level we don’t nominate true conservatives. We haven’t had a conservative GOP presidential nominee since Reagan. The GOP is on the verge of going the way of the Whig party in the 1850s. Either conservatives get real control over the party, or it will die.

The author is wrong on his point concerning Romney getting 1.4 million fewer votes than McCain. This claim was based on early data; more recent data confirms that Romney actually bested McCain’s showing by about 100,000 votes.

Christie’s buttkiss sabotaged Romney, not just in New Jersey, but across the country. It may not have been the only nail in the Romney coffin, but it sure amounted to a railroad spike in the lid. I used to like him; I now feel only contempt for him.

Why did you ever like him? Just because he’s often in the media’s face?

Sorry, but I have too much sense to like a politician based on just one tiny facet of his personality. Yes, courage is needed, but right principles are needed even more, and Christie has NONE of those.

I can’t get to the second page. My Kaspersky antivirus says it’s infected with a trojan virus. Anyway, I would never vote for the guy who helped elect Obama for another four years as our president. His Greek column photo op with Obama made Obama look good and caring to a lot of people. As for the federal help coming his way, good luck with that Christie. Never ever trust the current occupier of the White House to deliver on a promise. You’ve been had, Christie, like the rest of the country. And Obama doesn’t care. He got his second term and that’s all he cares about now and will care about for the next four years.

Well, I wouldn’t be too sure about that; he may be concerned with finding a way to be sworn in as President for life before ’16., after all, the constitution is a “living document”, and, anyway, it was written by old white guys, don’tchaknow?!?

The point in the story that resonated with me is the fact that the NFIP has only processed 30% of the homeowner’s claims while private insurance companies have completed more than 80% of the claims. So how well do you think Obamacare will function as compared to the private health insurance system we have now? Didn’t this clown diss Romney during the campaign over Obamacare, basically supporting the takeover of the healthcare system by the Feds? That was the moment my respect for Christie went from tolerable to disgust…. obviously another RINO. I should have known earlier when that moron Coulter kept singing Christie’s praises and begging the GOP establishment to force him into the race. I left the GOP in 92 when Bush I couldn’t even beat a redneck governor from Arkansas, and he was a big “New World Order” globalist pushing for the demise of our nation in concert with that other faux conservative Gingrich. Their all in it together (with a few exceptions) both Republicans and Democrats to retain their power and give it to the average joe in flyover country in the keister. Look into the Constitution Party or the American Independent Party if you want true America-loving conservatives.

I live in NJ. I *love* his hard line with the teachers’ union (AND I’m a teacher), but I dislike his pro-gun-control stances. I think he’s exactly the governor NJ needs right now (and has needed for awhile), but I don’t want him for president. Once this business with unions, property taxes, and home rule gets solved, he probably won’t be my first choice for governor, either, but for now, I’m happy we’ve got him (right where he is)!

Absolutely correct. I don’t doubt that Christie could be given the nomination by the Institutional Republicans. But it will be pointless. The elections will continue to be rigged, and it will not even be hard, because the Institutionals will have their wet dream of an election that does not include the involvement of those icky, nasty, Conservatives/TEA Party types/Patriots with the Republican Party. They made their choice, the results are on them. We know what is coming. They don’t. I suspect that they will find out what happened to the Mensheviki after the Bolsheviki took absolute power and the Mensheviki were not needed any more.

#30 SukieTawdry

I have commented elsewhere on that choice. Keeping in mind, that no matter what he does, Christie is preferable to the Institutionals over anyone who will defend the country, so this will not hurt his chances at a rigged nomination [with the able assistance of Karl Rove], since the election is to be rigged too.

As long as the WH-controlled MSM do not pick up on it and run hard with it, Menendez is safe. Any prosecution will have to be Federal, as it is Federal laws that have been broken. When is the last time that a Federal crime by a Democrat has been prosecuted by the Democrats? If he is prosecuted, it is because the attention may endanger those farther up the food chain, and he is being sacrificed.

As far as who Christie will appoint to the seat, if you are cynical enough to understand reality:

1) keep in mind that Christie, though nominally Republican, attached himself at the hip to Obama at the end of the 2012 campaign.

2) that he really, really wants to stay the governor of New Jersey.

3) that he is facing one particularly difficult challenger.

4) I am given to understand that New Jersey election laws are as convoluted as possible so as to give the governor and the [usually reliable] Democrat machine the greatest possible leeway, so that Christie can delay an election for his Senate appointee till November 2014, coincident with the governor’s election.

5) say hello to Senator Cory Booker, D-NJ. In return, the Democrats will promise not to run hard against him for governor. They lie, but Institutional Republicans will always believe anything a Democrat says.

They make great Senators… but as was explained above, they are both ineligible to be President as their parents are not born within the U.S., at lease one parent for each man is a naturalized citizen, making them ineligible for President or V.P. If we nominate and elect these guys, that makes us hypocrites for hammering Odumbo on this whole issue (still haven’t seen his legitimate birth certificate).

All of our legal system AND the vast majority of the voting public disagrees with you. Yes, they are wrong. So what? They control. You can hammer on this until the cows come home and the only thing you’ll accomplish is to marginalize the truth. You paint yourselves as whackos, along with the truth on which you insist.

This requires a more intelligent approach than charging up the middle of the Valley of Death like the Light Brigade.

Until we can fix it, it is what it is, and we can’t fix it until we start winning elections.

Stop living in lala land. Pick a decent candidate and win and THEN worry about fixing this issue. If that means picking someone who should not be eligible, fine.

Chris Christie is the best Governor we’ve had. Stop looking at the emotional aspect at what you falsely interpret as his ego. It’s his charm. It’s who he is while being both honest and funny at the same time.

He’s done a lot for our state, more than any of our other Governors had before. He’ll make a great President of the United States, too.

Tothian,
Please tell, what did he do for OUR State?
None of his legislation dealing with Unions has a no sunset provision. They are dead on arrival of the next D gov.
He kiboshed a LNG platform off our Coast, but loves him some windmills off the same coast.
He has urinated away hundreds of millions on Xanadu.
He has filled the holes in his “lower budget’ with Federal Dollars, taking the total expenditures to a +%7 Goobermint growth.

You should be able to note that my question was a ‘neutral’ one. Just a question for reasonable minds to ponder. Is our nation better served by a government of special interest puppets or a government represented by the majority of the people?

The problem Zeke my man is that the two are not mutually exclusive and if ever there was a good example of that it is the Obama administration. Same thing here in California. The Obama and Brown Regimes are intensely beholden to special interests – public service unions, environmentalists, and a slew of socio-ethnic interest groups. They add up to just enough to create a majority that has proceeded to wreck havoc on the 49% minority and the economy. So I ask a question in return for your “reasonable mind to ponder”: Why is this better than limited government, equal treatment for all and freedom?

Thats only becuase the newer generations have let themselves become ‘conditioned’ to a government ran by corrup0ted special interests — the single most orign of todays national failures and the nations people divided as enemies of each other. Without ‘common causes’ uniting a nation and its governments, it fails — or falls completely. The latter, obviously, being the objective of the special interest dividers of today.

It’s such fun to see speculation of Presidential candidates three years before the election.

So far, I see the race as Rand Paul holding the right side of the track. Marco Rubio trying to add support from non-Republicans, and Chris Christie appealing to absolutely nobody.

This should be more fun than 2012 was. In 2012 everybody wanted somebody who was not Mitt Romney to win the Republican nomination. Of course the not-Romney dream died. Later on Romney for President died too.

In 2016 everyone who wants somebody who isn’t Chris Christie to win will see their dreams come true. Of course, chances are that Christie isn’t going to run and by 2016 everyone will have forgotten that people even discussed Christie as a candidate.

I’m still predicting that whoever the nominee is in 2016, it’s somebody nobody is talking about right now.

I am republican and he if became the nominee, I would vote for the Democratic opponent. Christie is a vulgar, self centered, islam appeasing bully. I have nothing but disrespect for that guy. Hell will freeze over before I’d vote for him.

Christie is not a RINO. He’s both fiscally and socially conservative. Right now he’s playing to the middle to win reelection. When that’s over you’ll see him shift back to the right. For now, he’s just playing politics.

i think chris would be a great president in 2016. one concern that he needs not to become a hot head when stupid people make dumb comments about him. by the end of the day america spend more time on who said what rather than taking care of the problem. chris c. need to shut it down quick when people make comments about his personal health. i also feel chris mouth is sometimes his worst enemy.